Environmental Land Management Schemes
(asked on 18th March 2025) - View Source
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to support and incentivise farmers in England to register in environmental land management schemes.
Answered by
Baroness Hayman of Ullock
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government is committed to delivering environmental outcomes through Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes and other schemes and grants.
We now have 37,000 Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) agreements which are already live, covering 4.3 million hectares of land. We will announce further details of a reformed SFI offer later this year.
Our standalone ELM Capital Grants are expected to be at their highest level in 24/25 and will reopen this summer after a short pause.
We are rolling out an improved Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier scheme later this year. We will open the rolling application window for Higher Tier in summer 2025, and we have started inviting farmers and land managers to begin the pre-application process.